Used to wake up every morning, grab his rifle, and shoot the first Squirrel he saw. Scrambled the brains in with his morning eggs.

I wouldn't have wanted to get on the bad side of my Ancestors, had we lived in the same time. Sharecroppers, oilmen, pioneers... One even rode with the Dalton (I think that was it) gang.

If I recall correctly, the story goes that the local Sheriff came to the family farm one morning looking for the son who was part of the gang. The mother invited the Sheriff in for breakfast. As Okies are likely to do then as now, they chatted for a good half hour before getting to the matter at hand. The Sheriff said he was there looking for the boy, and had the Father seen him. The Father finished his coffee, and said in a polite way that 'Nope, I ain't seen that boy in damn near a week'. To punctuate this, he drew the hammers back on a sawed-off he was holding under the table, one at a time (which he had set up when he saw the sheriff riding up the road)- snick-click...snick-click.

The story goes that the Sheriff turned beet red, then ghostly white. Finished his coffee, bade the family good bye, and never came looking again.

Later, again if I recall the legend, the boy ran a-foul of the gang. They swore to hunt him down and kill him. So he did what any clever Okie would do. He hid in the hills above the gang hide-out, so he could keep an eye on them. Figured the only way to be safe was to know where they were all the time.

Yeti